How to Make an Impact With Your Embodied Voice
- Brainz Magazine
- Aug 29
- 8 min read
Sharon Wright, the founder of Gorgeous Hearts Coaching, is passionate about helping empty nesters to regain their vitality, realise their soul purpose, and enjoy meaningful relationships. She is a qualified coach and naturopath with over 10 years of experience in somatic voice work (a modality that facilitates alignment to the soul).
Two people can say almost the same sentence and yet one of them is heard, remembered, and acted upon, while the other is forgotten within seconds. Why is that? And more importantly: what can we do to influence, encourage, inspire, and enrich the people around us?
Living in Spain and speaking both English and Spanish, I’ve come to appreciate how different languages don’t just use different words, they follow different rhythms. The slightest variance in how you enunciate or stress a particular word can cause misunderstandings, which leads to a lot of frustration in meetings with international clients or colleagues.
But understanding is not just about whether you identify the words you hear and make sense of them in context, there are so many other ingredients that play a part. In the same way, if getting heard, so that you can bring your ideas to the table, collaborate effectively with others, or have a positive impact on your team, audience, or colleagues, is important to you, those ingredients need sourcing from a reliable supplier.
In this blog, we’ll explore how your voice isn’t just a loudspeaker. Think of it instead as an amplifier with reverb, equalisation, effects, and (most importantly) a power source. Plug the whole equipment in and you won’t just survive meetings and presentations, you’ll leave people inspired, engaged, and ready to follow the mission you’re leading.
Why do some words resonate, while others slip right on over your head?
Is it the words we choose, or how we say them?
Maybe it’s more to do with how your whole body communicates energy through your voice that allows your ideas to land in the room, shape collaboration, and inspire action?
Have you ever noticed how someone can repeat exactly what you’ve just said, and suddenly their words are heard, while yours were ignored?
What you said may have been important, but how you said it may not have had an impact. Maybe the person or people listening were not ready to hear it at that particular moment, which of these is true, and can we do anything about it?
It’s not just the words we use, the hand gestures, anecdotes, and jokes that win an audience, the deeper reason is something more subtle behind the scenes that precedes the delivery.
And that something is Energy.
Oh, and it’s not just your energy, it’s the energy that is in a room, that each person is aligned to. We have to consider energy before anything else.
Let’s start with your energy because you actually do have the power to alter the vibrational quality in a room, perhaps that’s where the secret ‘source’ is.
Energy is already present before you even open your mouth. Many people talk about ‘reading the room,’ and this is where you can realise everyone can actually be aware of energy.
Your body is a vibrating instrument, plugged into a power source. But what source is it plugged into?
Now, everyone can visualise the overloaded socket, that plugboard stuffed with extensions and adaptors. That’s the body in overdrive, maybe due to overthinking, anxiety, or an attachment to how this will play out. There are too many inputs ready to blow a fuse. It’s likely to make your words come out rushed and scattered, and the result is often overwhelming to an audience. There might be noise, but little resonance.
However, a simpler concept is to plug directly into the wall. Clean direct energy from you (what sources you are is another matter and not for this blog). Your whole body will feel vivacious, yet settled and without interference. From here, your words flow with warmth, clarity, and rhythm so that your voice reverberates in everyone’s body. People don’t just hear you; they feel you.
This is the voice that lands. This is the voice that influences.
Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 (Mehrabian’s Rule) states that only 7% of the meaning of what we feel and our attitude about what we’re speaking about is relayed through the words we speak when communicating with others. 38% of the meaning is through tone and quality of voice, and then 55% is from our body language, especially our facial expressions. But could it be that 100% depends on what energy we are aligning to well before we apparently choose words and think about tone? Does that all happen automatically when we focus on bringing our voice directly from the body? Be your own guinea pig and try it. Before speaking to someone, make a mental note to reconnect to your body and feel the difference. You may agree that there was no trying, no effort, and no thinking involved. Your voice and your body in total harmony.
Anxiety: A smoking plugboard that shorts out your voice
When you feel anxious, your nervous system switches into survival mode. The sympathetic nervous system speeds up your heart rate, shortens your breath, and tightens your muscles. Your voice follows suit and becomes tight, shaky, rushed, or withdrawn.
This is why many professionals can find themselves ‘holding back’ in meetings, even when they feel they have something valuable to contribute.
This has repercussions at work, as you may feel less empowered and give your power away, possibly missing opportunities.
But it’s not just work. Holding back in any relationship means that you’re not free to be authentic when you express yourself, and this can make you more defensive and even resentful. There can be no enrichment if there is no real you in the conversation.
Did you know that the fear of public speaking consistently ranks as one of the most common fears worldwide? If you’d like to discover how your own voice can help you to manage anxiety, you can read a bit more about it in this article.
How to settle your body & deliver a killer talk
Here are some practical steps to anchor your voice in presence:
1. Your breath as an anchor to reconnect
Use your breath as your anchor back to the body. Slow, steady breathing steadies the nervous system and helps you to remain clear and settled. The perfect way to prevent rising anxiety and panic.
2. Rhythm and movement
Create a frequent rhythm of exercises that help you to connect the voice and the body (Contact me for an initial free consultation, and I’ll share how). When you use your voice, don’t be averse to movement. A small, gentle hand gesture, a conscious shift in posture, a lowering of the shoulders, or a movement of the head connects your body with your words.
3. Return to presence
Be aware and notice when you’re ‘plugged into the overloaded socket.’ Are you rushing? Do you feel tension in your shoulders, your neck, or your jaw? Pause a moment, breathe, reset, and return to the direct source of presence in your body.
4. A steady voice from your diaphragm
Speak from your diaphragm and you’ll feel steady. A grounded, resonant voice carries authority and warmth simultaneously. It helps you to speak with people and not at them.
Your breath is fundamental for the correct function of your voice. Neuroscientists have discovered that deep and slow breathing stimulates the vagus nerve, which helps to regulate the parasympathetic nervous system, leading to a more settled, steadier voice and a clear mind.
The power of words delivered with presence
Of course, words matter, but it’s how they are embodied and expressed that gives them life. Try it for yourself: read a passage from a text aloud whilst thinking about the words and what they mean. Then, read the same passage aloud but stop thinking about the words, reconnect to your body, pace yourself, feel the flow of the rhythm, and deliver. You may hear that your voice has a more resonant tone, and you just feel where to pause without second-guessing. This kind of delivery makes your ideas memorable and impactful.
There is much said about how emotionally resonant language is remembered more clearly than neutral statements and how metaphors activate more areas of the brain than literal descriptions. For me, this definitely works, but it’s important not to overdo it. Analogies, anecdotes, imagery, and rhythm all help listeners stay engaged, but remember it’s the quality of your connection to your voice and your body that will deliver authentically and empoweringly.
The energy in the house
You need to focus on your energy first, but observing the energy in a room can also give you a clear clue as to what you can harness or cut out.
For example, if you are in a meeting that everyone wants to escape from, it won’t be to your advantage to elongate metaphors and stories; you’ll just annoy your audience. If the audience is eager to listen, you can extend your rhetoric. But the important thing here is the observation because reading the room is a skill that will soon be sharpened if you do. You do have the power to bring new energy to a room, too. When you hold yourself firmly and deliver an embodied presentation or performance, people catch the energy and align with it, even if they aren’t in agreement with what you say. This is not the case if you give your power away. You’re likely to absorb exactly what was in the room to begin with, and nothing you say will have any impact.
Be the light in the room to inspire and impact others positively.
So, to conclude, next time you enter a meeting (whether in person or online), you deliver a presentation, you sing in front of an audience (even if it’s a karaoke bar) or you enjoy a heartfelt conversation with your partner, remember that your voice is so much more than sound and what you say is so much more than words.
You will be expressing your energy in real time, and it will have an impact. The impact can be harmful, i.e,. it has no purpose and just creates a reaction in the person listening, or it can be enriching and inspiring. What will it be?
Plug into your true source and you won’t even need to ask.
If you’d like to explore this embodied transformation, join my Facebook group. I continuously offer workshops to introduce people to this transformational modality.
What’s one small way you can love your authentic voice today?
Read more from Sharon Wright
Sharon Wright, Somatic Voice & Relationship Coach
Sharon Wright spent many years searching for true meaning and love in her life. After many spiritual detours that nearly destroyed her marriage, she learned that her body was a way to connect to true love, aka the soul. She has since developed and shared techniques to facilitate that reconnection via awareness of the vibrational integrity of the voice. She both coaches and mentors her clients, empty nesters who often feel alone after their kids have left home, to manage anxiety and connect more deeply with their partners. One of her main tenets, that the vibrations of the voice can harm or heal, depending on the energy one is aligned to, brings focus to heart-led living for purposeful and evolving relationships.
